Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 18: The Frenemy of My Enemy
Everyone has their own agenda and it comes to a head in this
episode! Definitely a lot more elegantly done than the three-way between
SHIELD, Whitehall and Cal earlier in this season. It’s a relatively solid
episode, with every party getting some decent screentime before everything
comes to a head in that apartment where Skye, Lincoln, Cal, Deathlok, Coulson,
Ward, Hunter, 33 and Bakshi throw down and fight each other with their own agendas
while Real-SHIELD watches.
A good chunk of the episode, those dealing with the Inhumans plot,
has Skye convincing Jiaying and Gordon to let her bring Cal to their ‘home’ and
try to get him to mellow out to the idea of being left out of the Inhuman
society. It’s clear that Skye has grown somewhat attached to Cal – he is trying
to be a good father, as fucked up as his mind is – and at the very least she
wants to stop Cal from going all Hulk in a populated area. There are some great
(and really fun) scenes of Cal just happy trying to bond with his daughter, and
the rather crushed look on his face when Skye basically tells him they need to
move on science fairs and ice cream stands and whatnot… and the
angry-and-disappointed look when he realizes that the Inhumans have been
wanting to dump him like a stray dog. Skye, obviously, not as much as Jiaying
and the others, but poor Cal. Skye also gets some nice scenes as she tries to
hang out with Cal and actually seems to enjoy herself somewhat, and truly does
look heartbroken when Lincoln shows up and Cal looks pissed off.
There’s also a nice little nod to Skye’s comic-book counterpart,
Daisy Johnson (a.k.a. Quake), when Skye sees Cal’s original name: Calvin
Johnson. Skye says her original birth name, Daisy Johnson, out loud and seems
to like it, while Cal notes he changed his last name to something more sinister
when he’s on the run. Comic book readers know it’s a sly nod to Cal’s comic
book counterpart, Calvin Zabo.
We also get a short scene of Jiaying not really buying into the
whole ‘clairvoyant’ thing with Raina, considering such an ability was unheard
of before, but Gordon points out that his
ability was the first of his kind too. Jiaying also doesn’t particularly
care what happens if Cal goes all Mr. Hyde in a populated area, because they’re
Inhumans and they only care about Inhumans. Professor X, these people aren’t.
Meanwhile, Coulson, Hunter and Deathlok have rendezvoused with
Fitz, and we get some vague skipping around answers when Fitz asks Deathlok
where his upgrades come from. Coulson you sly bastard! Coulson’s plan to locate
Skye and bring down Hydra involves him kind of trying to recruit Ward, since
Ward knows Hydra. And it’s kind of a risky gamble – Hydra is tracking down metahumans, one of which is Gordon the teleporter,
who Coulson knew had abducted Skye, so why not bring down Hydra? There’s some
nice tie-ins with Age of Ultron as
well. We’ve known Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker is involved as this background
mastermind for Hydra for quite some time, and we know he’s gathering metahumans
(the Maximoff twins, for one) and dr List, his majordomo, does make an
appearance in this episode as a major villain. And he’s apparently been
tracking Gordon’s teleportation for quite some time.
List showed up before on a prior Agents of SHIELD before, and while
he doesn’t really do much but be a generic evil superior officer, I do like the
little expansion of roles for List and by extension Strucker, considering the
rather… pitiful appearance they had in Age
of Ultron. I also like how they’ve actually been targeting Inhumans while
hunting metahumans, as shown by them experimenting on Ethan, the poor Inhuman
boy we saw a couple episodes back going camping. Well, so much for the Inhuman
society being a safe haven!
But first, Ward. Ward is all lovey-dovey with 33 now, and actually
shows up to the meeting when they corner and take 33 hostage. Do like how
royally pissed off Fitz is at Ward, and I do like how Coulson manages to win
Ward over by putting him through Tahiti to wipe his memories clean… and Ward
pretending to accept just to get SHIELD off his ass. Ward’s plan is to use
Sunil Bakshi, who they brainwashed, to pretend to hook up with dr List and get
them the information they need. Meanwhile Bakshi seems to be improvising and shows
Deathlok as a ‘gift’, causing a bit of a tense situation between Coulson’s
people and Ward’s people. Of course by the end of this episode Bakshi actually
reveals himself to be actually a traitor, so good for Bakshi!
Ward himself is kind of… disappointing, really. He falls in line
relatively quickly and while he definitely has a thing or two up his sleeve, he
seems way too cooperative with Coulson to be true, especially at the end where
he seems to have gone to being a full ally. There must be something more going
on with the sick monster that is Grant Ward, and I want to see that explored. 33,
or Kara, as she wants to be called now, really wants to leave all her lives
behind and just be Kara. She’s been
in contact with her mother, which is nice, and based on some lines between her
and Ward, they kind of seem to just want to settle down. 33 and Hunter working
together and covering each other’s back during the firefight against Hydra is
kind of nice, too, showing that whatever 33 has became, she’s not
dishonourable.
Deathlok asking 33 whether she has more of those face-changing stuff
is hilarious. Deathlok himself is the subject of some nice little deadpan jokes
about him being a SHIELD agent… with rockets in his arm.
Simmons, meanwhile, is pissed about May bringing Bobbi into the
fold, and especially when the crime of taking the Toolbox is pinned on Fitz.
May herself is kind of shaping up to be the middle ground between Coulson and
RealSHIELD, which is fine. She does have her reasons to distrust Coulson,
especially since Theta Protocol seems to be draining a shit-ton of resources. On the other hand, Bobbi is starting to
doubt RealSHIELD’s priorities considering they’re hunting for the
otherwise-harmless Coulson while Hydra is allowed to run rampant. Mack is still
being a bit of a dick, though not as much as previous episodes.
And when Hydra attacks the building, hunting for Gordon, I do like
just how confused and disjointed everyone is. Lincoln fights Deathlok because they
don’t know each other – and poor Deathlok just having no idea how to fight
someone who shoots electricity out of his hands. Cal just wants to have a day
with his daughter and gets pissed off and starts beating the ever loving hell
out of Hydra agents. Coulson and Ward teaming up and just beating up Hydra
people. And Bakshi? Throwing a grenade at Deathlok and Lincoln after they tire
each other out. Hydra definitely won, getting not only a valuable member back
in Bakshi, but also capturing two metahumans.
Gordon warps Skye (and Cal, accidentally) out of the whole
conflict, while Coulson accidentally gets caught on camera hanging out with
Ward by Real-SHIELD hacking into Deathlok’s eye. Oops, there goes May’s
loyalty! It’s interesting and all sorts of fun situations that the characters
are brought into, and while this episode is kind of slow-paced in the
beginning, everything suddenly goes straight to hell in the last ten minutes or
so. It’s definitely an episode to get our adrenaline pumped for the next
episode, and with season two reaching its finale, well… I’ve really been liking
season two a lot, you know? It’s got a rather terrible start, but these past
few episodes had been really good. Hopefully the next few episodes don’t lose
the momentum, and Age of Ultron’s premiere
in between some of the episodes would be handled as well as Winter Soldier’s debut in the middle of
season one.
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